Monday, October 3, 2011

Most Americans receive their impressions of what goes on in court from courtroom dramas in the movies or on TV, or from serving on juries – in other words, law as it is practiced in criminal proceedings or in lawsuits. In such cases, there are extensive rules of procedure and evidence that judges are required to follow. Not only that, but the judge is not the one making the decision; the jury is.

Few people realize that family law cases don’t look anything like this. There are almost no rules of procedure or evidence that the judge has to follow, and the judge is the lone decision-maker. In this context the potential is overwhelming for unfairness in the procedure and bias in the ruling. Family law judges are free to do almost anything they choose (short of sleeping with one of the parties, which did finally get a judge in Massachusetts in trouble in a case that I followed). They can choose to listen to a party or to refuse to let him or her speak. They can examine certain evidence or refuse to hear it. They can allow certain witnesses to testify and refuse to hear from others, or refuse to let the parties have a hearing to put on witnesses at all. Most people would be stunned to observe what happens in family law; it’s kangaroo court.

Which brings us to the latest news in the Wendi G. case. For the second time a judge has declared that he won’t look at the evidence of child sexual abuse and yet is going to punish Wendi as if she’s making her children’s disclosures up. This time it’s Judge Jon Hulsing of Ottawa County (MI) Circuit Court. (Last time it was Judge Thomas Kane in Colorado; you can read my blog entry from August 25th.)

Here’s what happened: On this past Tuesday, September 27, Wendi had to go to court because her ex-husband, Mr. C., filed a motion to terminate all contact between Wendi and her children, meaning no phone calls and no visits even with supervision, and to suspend all parental rights for Wendi – meaning she couldn’t even speak with school personnel. The hearing began with testimony from Mr. C. which took up the morning session. After lunch Judge Hulsing asked for a meeting with the attorneys in his chambers. He then returned to open court and presented his ruling. Yes, you read it correctly; the judge ruled before the mother’s case was ever presented, having heard only from the father.

During the meeting that had happened in the judge’s chambers, Wendi’s attorney, a national voice for abused children named Alan Rosenfeld, requested an evidentiary hearing where Wendi would be able to present witnesses and other evidence. Such a hearing is crucial to fairness and safety; Mr. C. is claiming that Wendi should be cut off the children because she had no reason to take the children into hiding, and Wendi can’t defend herself against this charge if she can’t present the evidence of sexual abuse. But Judge Hulsing stated that he would not grant an evidentiary hearing until after Wendi’s criminal trial on kidnapping charges, which is still more than a month away.

Judge Hulsing further stated that even at that time he will not allow the videotape of the forensic interviews with Wendi’s children to be introduced into evidence. The highly-trained forensic interviewer team, which included a police detective and three human service professionals, did not find any evidence of the children’s statements having been pressured or coached and elicited detailed and credible descriptions of multiple incidents of sexual touching by the father of the daughter, some of which the boy reported having witnessed. (I have read the full report of the forensic interview team.)

Wouldn’t the judge be eager to see this evidence, so that he could decide for himself whether there was adequate reason to cut a mother off from her children? And wouldn’t he want to know whether there’s reason to be concerned for the children’s safety, since they are currently living with their father? Objective observers are forced to conclude that the judge has already decided that no significant evidence exists -- without looking at it. But what if Wendi and her daughter are telling the truth? Then the children would be currently at risk, and they would be suffering serious punishment – being isolated completely from their loving mother – for the offense of disclosing what was happening to them.

Judge Hulsing then came out into the court room and ruled that Wendi cannot have any contact with her children for the next five weeks because he doesn’t want her to “sandpaper” the case. He did not explain why he is concerned that Wendi would influence the children’s statements but not concerned that Mr. C. might do so. And not only has no one presented any evidence yet that the children’s statements to the forensic interviewers were coached or pressured, the children expressed in those interviews being afraid of their father but not their mother; the risk of “sandpapering” would thus appear to be more serious in the paternal home. Ah yes, but the judge refuses to read the reports of those interviews, or watch the tapes.

Judge Hulsing stated that Wendi can put in a new request for an evidentiary hearing once her criminal trial is over, and at that point the judge will be willing to consider whether she may have “supervised phone contact” with her children. It would appear, thus, that he has already decided that no outcome could persuade him to resume the children’s normal relationship with their mother. Our society is educating children that if someone touches them sexually they should “tell someone,” but these children appear to have paid the highest price imaginable for having done so.

2) File a formal complaint (anyone can do so, but you will have to give your name) with the Judicial Tenure Commission by going to the website at jtc.courts.mi.gov/. This process requires the extra step of filling out a form and taking it to be notarized, but there would potentially be a significant impact if large numbers of people filed formal complaints, so I’m hoping that you will. Again, use the case number shown above.

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Sunday, October 2, 2011

The man who abuses his partner tries to make her feel alone – and in many ways tries to make her actually be alone. He tends, for example, to work hard to damage the woman’s friendships and cause distance in her relationships with her relatives. He criticizes her if she gives too much attention to other people, saying that she should be focused entirely on him. He may even listen in on her phone calls and read her emails to keep tabs on her communications with the outside world.

Why does the abusive man want to cut you off from others? First of all, he knows it will increase his power. A victim who is isolated is more dependent, more afraid to stand up to the abuser, more vulnerable. If the abuser can keep you away from contact with other people he can make sure that his voice is the only voice that you hear, and that makes him become the Last Word, the Voice of Truth.

To his mind, isolating you helps ensure that you won’t get information that might help you. The more you have contact with the world, the more you might learn about your legal rights; or you might talk to someone who helps you realize the abuse is not your fault; or you might find out that he’s been lying to you about important things. If you are more in contact with other people, you will feel stronger. You will believe in yourself more, and you might take steps to get your rights back, or to get away from the abuser. He wants to make sure this doesn’t happen, so he tries to narrow your world.

The second reason why the abuser uses isolation tactics is that he wants you to be focused exclusively on doing things for him. And he feels that if you have your own life, then you’ll be putting more of your energy toward yourself, and therefore less toward him. This kind of “zero-sum” thinking is distorted; the reality is that the richer a life you are living, the more you have to give to your partner (and to your children). But the abuser doesn’t look at it that way. He wants to control your attentions, and make them all be for him.

His excuses for isolating you may be disguised as efforts to help you. He may say that you should spend less time with your family because they are too much in your business and are trying to control you. He may tell you that your friends are using you, that they are just after you for money or to get you to look after their children. He may say that people in your life are lying to you. Be on the lookout for ways that he is poisoning your connections while pretending that it’s for your own good.

In many cases a woman doesn’t realize that her partner is isolating her until the damage has gone quite a ways. However, it is never too late to reestablish your connection to the world.

Even if you aren’t with your abusive partner any more, his effects can live on; a woman sometimes finds that it takes a long time to recover from all the damage that the abuser did to her relationships – including damage to her belief that anyone would even want to be her friend. So the project of breaking isolation is an important one even if your relationship is over.

Look for ways to reach out to people. You may have to be secretive about it, you may have to be cunning, but don’t give up. If your abuser is monitoring your telephone, look for ways to send emails and then erase them after they’re sent. If he watches all of your electronics, see if you can get in conversations at the grocery store, or see if you can slip a handwritten note to someone who might be able to help you. If he lets you go to medical appointments, that might be your opportunity to tell someone what is happening at home, or to make a friend in the waiting room. Look for a chance to call a hotline and talk.

Reach out to people who have turned against you, and see if those relationships can be repaired. Try to help people understand how the abuse has affected you, and that you didn’t really want to drop out of contact; help them see how he caused rifts in your relationships. Make apologies where you owe them to people, even if that’s hard to do, and see if you can bring people back close to you. If he has created bad feeling between you and your children, see if you can approach them in a new way, saying things you haven’t said before, and get the door to open again.

Try not to let the abuser convince you that you aren’t a desirable friend. There are people out there in the world who will love you, who will appreciate who you are, who will take the time to get to know what is inside of you, below the surface. There are dozens of women and men whose lives could use somebody like you. Don’t believe him that nobody wants you.

I understand that you may feel that you can’t trust anyone, given how burned you feel by him and by other people who have sided with him. But if he can keep you from ever trusting people, then he wins again. Don’t let him do it. There are trustworthy people in the world, people of honesty and integrity, people who stick by their friends. In fact, there are boatloads of them. Keep your eyes open, yes; don’t trust recklessly. But do trust.

Every day, think of a step you could take that day, even if it has to be a small one, toward breaking your isolation. The world wants you in it.

(As I write this, I am also thinking about people who have been abused in other kinds of circumstances. You might have been abused by one of your parents, or by a boss, or by a same-sex partner you were involved with. Whoever it was, they almost certainly used isolation tactics on you and tried to divide you from potential allies. And they had no right to do that.)

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